NEW YORK – An unusually raucous roar erupted from the Citi Field matinee audience of 24,851 when Jordany Valdespin was announced as the pinch-hitter with one out in the ninth inning Thursday.

Ike Davis had just crushed a solo home run to lead the inning off and cut the Dodgers’ advantage to one. Mere hours removed from Valdespin’s heroics Wednesday night, an encore was anticipated.

But unlike Wednesday, when he dramatically capped a Mets comeback extra-inning win with a walk-off grand slam, Valdespin did not deliver. He struck out and Mike Baxter, Wednesday’s co-star, grounded out to end the game, a 3-2 Dodgers win.

A ninth-inning Dodgers rally spoiled Jeremy Hefner’s pristine outing, an invaluable development for a starting rotation lacking certainty beyond Matt Harvey. Hefner baffled the high-priced Dodgers lineup for seven innings, but the Mets bullpen could not patch together a second straight scoreless effort.

The light-hitting Nick Punto led the ninth inning off with a double against Scott Rice. Adrian Gonzalez’s groundout to first base advanced Punto to third. The Mets then decided to intentionally walk Matt Kemp, who had two hits, for the favorable matchup against the left-handed hitting Andre Ethier.

Ethier, a .238 career hitter against lefties, smacked a single to center field to score Punto and chase Rice.

“This guy gets so many groundballs,” Collins said of Rice. “And he hasn’t given up a hit to a lefty all year. I mean, like one hit to a lefty all year. We tried to get a groundball from Ethier to get out of the inning.”

Bobby Parnell then entered and Juan Uribe, who walked in his previous three plate appearances against Hefner, lashed a grounder to a diving Ruben Tejada. The shortstop didn’t have a play and Kemp scored the third run.

The Mets (10-10) squandered a major scoring opportunity in the eighth. Tejada led off with a single to center field off Kenley Jansen. Murphy followed with a walk, but Jansen retired David Wright, Lucas Duda and Marlon Byrd in order to escape the jam.

“They did a better job than we did with some of the situational hitting,” Wright said.

But for seven frames, Hefner stifled the Dodgers (10-11). The right-hander surrendered one run and, consequently, his ERA plummeted from 7.07 in his first four appearances (three starts) to 5.14. It was his first seven-inning effort since his final start of the 2012 season.

He issued three walks and hit one batter. He allowed three hits, none of which were home runs after allowing seven in his first 14 innings this season.

“It bugged me a little more than I let on,” Hefner said of the high home run total. “If I’m successful, I’m getting groundballs.”

Hefner’s first inning falsely indicated another forgettable outing was imminent. Seeking to pound the inside of the strike zone, he hit leadoff hitter Carl Crawford with his third pitch, a 90 MPH fastball. Two batters later, Kemp’s single to left field drove Crawford in for Kemp’s fourth RBI of the series.

“What I had trouble with leading up to this game was getting balls all the way inside so I was making a point, this start, that whenever I miss I’m going to miss in,” Hefner said.

It was the only production the Dodgers could generate off Hefner. After walking Uribe to leadoff the second, the right-hander retired eight straight until Uribe, usually a free swinger, earned another leadoff walk in the fifth inning.

Including Uribe’s patient exploits, Hefner allowed just seven baserunners. One was erased with a fielder’s choice. Three were retired as part of double plays.

Dodgers starter Hyun-jin Ryu, a 26-year-old rookie, was equally effective. The husky southpaw matched Hefner with one run over a career-high seven innings in his fifth start. He struck out eight Mets – victimizing Davis, Anthony Recker and Hefner twice each – and walked three.

Pitching for a Dodgers team suddenly employing a decimated starting rotation, Ryu allowed just three hits to the delight of a large contingent of Korean fans concentrated behind the Dodgers dugout.

Los Angeles posted a $26 million fee over the offseason to persuade Ryu to abandon the Korean major leagues. He signed a six-year, $36 million contract, a bargain by the franchise’s expensive standards.

“All the tape, all the other stuff that you read when you research doesn’t do it justice until you see a guy,” Collins said.

The Dodgers bullpen, unlike the Mets unit, completed the effort and prevented another late-inning collapse.